Texture packs, replacement models, and post-processing mods can do a lot to pretty a game up, but they can’t conceal that jagged old level geometry. It’s an awful lot more work to re-do and update levels but by gum, the folks at Deus Ex: Revision are putting in the time. The Caustic Creative team have been tarting up and reworking Deus Ex‘s levels with more props, more decorative architecture, and fancier lighting.

Version 1.0 of the “re-imagining” mod had been due on May 12 but due a mysterious alluring offer it’s pushed back into the nebulous “near future,” those PC Gamer chaps have spotted. In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with a new video showing off a few of the reworked levels.

Revision is, in Caustic’s own words, “bringing new level design, aesthetic direction and world-building detail” to the Ion Storm classic. Enough is changed that it’s pushing up against the limitations of Deus Ex’s old, old version of Unreal Engine. It comes bundled with the New Vision texture pack, the HDTP models (disabled by default, if you don’t fancy their new style), and a few other mods which bring things a bit more up to date. It’ll be the shiniest Deus Ex yet, in short.

“We realize that the delay is unpleasant for everyone who has been anticipating Revision 1.0, but we’ve had an offer that is too good to pass up, and it means that we can avoid crunching in these next couple weeks,” Caustic said in a blog post last week. “Revision is not canceled by any means, and we still plan to finish production and launch in the near future.”

How very mysterious! Here, have a gander at the video released alongside that news:

I’m a latecomer to Deus Ex and I agree, just some of the usual fixes to play old games on a modern screen is enough for me. Except for one thing – The absolutely horrible footstep sounds (even for its time). It’s like everybody’s got pony hoof augumentations. It’s slowly driving me insaaaaaane.

*sigh*
I appreciate the work put into adding details, improving textures, etc., but at the end of the day it still looks absolutely ancient. I love the original game, I’ve played it 3 times and would play it again if it were upgraded to a modern version. I really wish somebody would redo the entire thing in UE4 – add in some physics, some destructible environments, improved AI, updated level design and GTA5-quality cutscenes – that would be sick. I would totally plop down half a benji on something like that. And if they do a collector’s edition in a beautiful box with a high quality artbook and the original game included I’ll start throwing money at my computer screen.

Did I understand correctly that it’s a rebuild in the SAME engine? That seems strange as rebuilds have tended to be done in newer sparkle generators. I was expecting them to say this was a recreation in one of the cryengines.

I may have missed that though. I’m watching it on the loo at work with the volume down.

I don’t think anyone has ever actually completed a remake of an old game in a new engine other than Black Mesa. Which we all know is not even technically complete, and took 9 some years to get where it is. I rather fancy the look of the old Unreal engine anyways, just played through Unreal Gold last week and it was great.

Yeah, it’s the same engine. It’s not like we are recreating the entire game, we “just” redesign the levels and add a new optional soundtrack. Porting the game to a newer engine would require the original source, and a lot more then just five people.

Ah, that would be lovely. :) We are going to try and do some modifications to the rendering engine so we can add per-pixel-lighing. It wouldn’t be ready for Revision’s release, but might be sometime in the summer. If only Epic released the source to UE1 then it would be significantly easier to change stuff like AI, rendering, proper physics support, skeletal animation and so on. :)

You guys should bug them about that. Now that they’re releasing UE4’s source code, they might be motivated to do the same for UE1.

You might still have some trouble though; I was part of a team that remade Unreal Tournament in the UT2004 version of UE2, and when the question was raised, at the time we were told no, primarily because there were clients who had licensed the engine who did not want to expose their multiplay to cheat vulnerabilities.

AOE 2 HD was supposed to be mostly just an updated version of the classic…and that turned out to be a shamefull mess of a cash grab on release. A year later now, it is still significantly worse than the original version :(

I dont trust them to remake such classics with a decent amount of respect, sadly. :/

Despite my many attempts over the last 14 years, the furthest I’ve ever got in Deus Ex was Hong Kong. There’s just something, some kind of barrier, between it and me that I suspect means we’ll never quite get on as well as we’d both like. Perhaps a mod like this would help. Or maybe I’m just rubbish at critical game theory or something.

Since I’m apparently the only person here who doesn’t follow the mandate of Thou Shalt Play This Cool Old Game Like Every Year, this seems like as good an excuse to replay it as any. Now if only I could find the obsolete piece of plastic where the game itself has been recorded…

I never thought the game looked that old or ugly, but that’s because I still play a lot of 10+ year old games. With a game like Deus Ex, it’s not graphical quality I’m after, but rather more stuff to do, more things to get me to immerse myself further in that world. FPS games and visual mods are a much better match, I think. With story heavy games, I want more story, not fancier graphics.

This may not exactly match your interests then, but one thing I like about it is that setting the same story in a different shaped world, one I’m not quite as familiar with, can put different quirks on how it actually plays out. Different tactics, maybe actually meeting smuggler earlier on. Changes based on how the new stuff interacts with my habits. I never really download new texture packs, but a level rebuild is a different matter.

From what I’ve seen so far it seems that the way they’re redesigning and expanding the levels does mean there’ll be more to see and do. It’s not just a graphics update with a bunch of extra clutter scattered around existing levels.